If the Heavens Were Paper and the Earth Ink

The Yad Vashem on the Mount of Remembrance

The history of mankind is strewn with the blood of the helpless caught up in the flood of conquests perpetrated by ruthless, ungodly, power mad men and their ungodly philosophies.  The intellectual demagogues should take care, as they spew out the godless philosophies of the unregenerate, worldly minds of the past and present, that it could fall upon the ears of individuals lacking the dignity to respect the rights and customs of their fellow men.  Such has been the case all too often; men that are angry, bitter, and frustrated with their physical, spiritual, economic and/or political environments tend to embrace the ideas that manifest the social order ( or disorder which usually occurs) that they desire for themselves to relieve their frustrations.  They surround themselves with those of like passions leading to the birth of intolerant, larger parties or factions sweeping up all that lay before them.

The Romans and the Greeks began with seemingly good intentions but at the heart of their philosophies lay the seeds of intolerance and greed without any checks or balances to control them.  When our European ancestors first set foot on the North American continent, they encountered, seemingly, less advanced cultures that were often at odds with other groups around them as they competed for the limited resources of their local environments.   As the newcomers from across the Atlantic with their new government of the people, by the people, and for the people moved farther west encountering more of the aboriginal groups, our fore fathers failed to include these original Americans into their definition of ‘we the people’ and were not unwilling to exterminate whole tribal communities to gain the resources to which they believed their philosophy of Manifest Destiny entitled them.

Men like Tom Jeffords, John Clum, and Henry Knox respected the customs of the Native Americans but lacked the influence to stem the tide of public sentiment.  Andrew Jackson was in favor of removing all Native Americans in the eastern United States (thousands in number) west of the Mississippi River; thus was instituted the ‘Trail of Tears’ in the 1830’s in which many hundreds of American Indians suffered and died being removed from their homes of hundreds of years.  We as a nation are still paying the price of our failure to be fare and tolerant.

Adolph Hitler and Heinrich Himmler

In 1933, a group appeared upon the scene in Europe that swept across the old Teutonic culture (Germany) incorporating some of the old ideas and symbols in an effort to regain the glories (though false in nature) of the old order.   Adolph Hitler (a WWI German army corporal working as a paper hanger after the war) was angry and bitter about the fate of Germany after the Armistice of November 11, 1918; he believed that the German people were not allowed to retain a modicum of dignity suffering from the revenge of the French and British in paying excessive war reparations.   This atmosphere of social and economic unrest set the stage for the rise of Nazism; Hitler enlisted the support of men like Joseph Goebbels (anti-Semitist and Minster of Propaganda), Hermann Goring (highest-ranking military officer in the Third Reich), and Heinrich Himmler (a leading member of the Nazi Party and architect of the Holocaust).  Hitler needed a group of people to blame for the conditions that the German people were suffering; he chose the old enemy, the seemingly well-off Jews.  Anti-Jewish sentiments escalated to the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’ (Kristallnacht- November 9, 1938) in which Jewish businesses, homes, hospitals, and synagogues were ransacked and demolished; many historians view this as the beginning of the Final Solution and The Holocaust. 

Thousands of Jewish people were arrested, their property confiscated, and their families incarcerated in prison camps.  After the war began in 1939, the fates of these and millions of others were known by only a few; some members of the Polish underground had infiltrated Nazi death camps and reported back to the allied command.  The allied leaders clung to their belief that the fate of the Jews would best be served by total annihilation of the fascist movements around the world and a swift end to the war.  They did not try to engage in secondary air attacks on railroad installations leading to the camps or organize underground commando raids on the facilities.  They did organize escape efforts for military personnel captured behind the lines and engage in OSS espionage activities in occupied Europe.

Eisenhower and Patton at Buchenwald

On April 11, 1945, men of the Sixth Armored Division of Patton’s Third Army liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp near Weimar, Germany.  The scene was that of horror for the young idealistic American army soldiers used to the idea of descent behavior.  Patton ordered the towns people of Weimar to clean up and bury the remains of thousands of Holocaust victims and the filming of the site in order that the whole of society would not forget what had happened during the Holocaust.

The Jerusalem Forest seen from the Holocaust History Museum

Today in Jerusalem stands the Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Center; Yad Vashem generally refers to associating a name with a place or remembering that each name of the holocaust victims in German records be associated with a family in order to be remembered.   The Hall of Remembrance has the records of all those that have been identified so far; there are millions yet to be identified with family records.  The site is located on top of the Mount of Remembrance 2638 feet above sea level near the Jerusalem Forest; a tranquil place for remembering their names.

The entrance to the Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem

At the end of the Holocaust History Museum is a place where some letters are projected onto the wall written by Holocaust victims, knowing they were about to die, wanting to leave some testimony of their existence; they put the letters in their pockets in hopes that they would be found.  Many were, indeed, found and are read daily; one such letter begins by saying, “If the heavens were paper and the earth ink, there would not be enough to express the pain and suffering of me and my family….”  This person has most definitely left behind a fitting testimony for all to read; a testimony with words that should burn into the hearts of all who read them.   There are still those today who try to say that the Holocaust never happened; they should come to see the evidence for themselves (this, of course, will never happen).  Their denials are inflammatory in nature meant to feed the flames of hatred.

The final heart rending moment comes in the Children’s Memorial dedicated to the 1.5 million none children who suffered a premature death; they could hardly understand the hatred that was directed at their innocence (woe unto him…It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.).  The interior hall is dark with five candles and an array of mirrors multiplying their light a thousand upon thousand fold; the effect seems to appear as millions.  The silence is broken as the name of each child is read continually until all 1.5 million are heard taking over three years to read them all; they too are remembered in this place.  God has them all in His hands and they suffer no longer.